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How the reporting of Napoleon’s death could help to stop the rot

Philip Aldrick

Tom Hayes, the former trader serving 11 years for rigging the interbank Libor interest rate, might have escaped jail were it not for an early 19th-century conman. Mr Hayes was convicted not of fraud but of the lesser crime of “conspiracy to defraud” and for that he has Charles de Berenger to blame.

Britain has a long, inglorious rogues gallery of financial fraudsters, of which Mr Hayes is only the latest. One of the first, and certainly the most brazen, was de Berenger.

Late one night in February 1814, dressed in the red military tunic of an officer, de Berenger barged his way into the Ship Inn in Dover demanding that a message be delivered to the admiral at the nearby Deal garrison. Napoleon was…